


Two People Make Better Explosions

by WriteThroughTheNight



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Bucky Barnes & Clint Barton Friendship, Clint Barton is oblivious, Excessive Swearing, Gen, Lots of explosions, M/M, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Winter Soldier Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-27
Updated: 2015-09-27
Packaged: 2018-04-23 18:01:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4886380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WriteThroughTheNight/pseuds/WriteThroughTheNight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Exactly how many HYDRA assassins running around with metal arms did you think there <em>were</em>?"</p>
<p>Clint's got to admit that Nat has a point.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Two People Make Better Explosions

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! I'm posting twice in one day, which I don't think has happened before, but I had this hanging around unfinished for no reason, so I finished it and here we are. This doesn't actually have any relation to my other Clint and Bucky Friendship fic, though the title is a bit of a nudge at it.
> 
> As always, I go unbetaed, though shout-out to bioluminescent who has to put up with me messing with this story instead of starting the birthday present she so very nicely asked for. A month ago.
> 
> Anyway, enjoy!

You see, the thing you need to remember is that the Avenger's taking down HYDRA didn't start with the team getting together and presenting a united force. It starts with Clint-

Well, no, that's not right either. It starts with Steve, way back in World War 2, but it moves to Clint before it moves to anyone else.

He's overseas when SHIELD falls apart to reveal the snake underneath, when Nick Fury calls his personal cellphone.

"Agent Barton, you have two options."

Clint knows what they are, can see them stretching before him. 

One: go back to the states, keep an eye on his apartment building in New York, maybe hang out with the Avengers, but mostly stay out of the spotlight.

Two: fuck shit up.

Clint's never been one for sensible decisions.

"Gotta list of targets for me, or what?" He drawls down the phone. 

Fury, who Natasha had said was dead (she had left a silent, broken message saying their friend was dead, Clint, please come back, I need you), snorts and gives him a few dozen locations.

They're scattered around the world, predominantly in Europe, and so Clint shrugs, leaves Nat a message (he says sorry dear but there's a world to save and old Nicky is pulling a Phil anyway), and heads out.

Destroying HYDRA bases reminds him vaguely of his mercenary years, when Clint didn't have to deal with civilians and minimizing damage but instead just made as big of a mess as he could. Clint can make a pretty big mess, he's a disaster like that.

Somewhere around month two, he crosses paths with Nat and Captain Rogers, and another man who calls himself Falcon. Clint calls him Sam because there's only one person allowed to make bird puns and that's him. He asks them if they're doing the same as him, taking down as much HYDRA as they've got bullets for, and Rogers' expression goes strange.

He tells Clint.

"I'm looking for someone. They took him from me, and I want him back."

Later, Nat tells him an unbelievable story about a man who fell from a train and became more than a man, spending almost as much time on ice as Steve. 

"If you come across anybody, his name is Barnes, Bucky Barnes."

Clint shrugs, and says okay, and blows up another two bases that month. It's not until he's on the next target, over three months since D.C., ominous italicization and all, that Clint falls out of his familiar pattern.

He's blown something up, thrown himself off the blown up building, and now he's falling, plummeting really. But, Clint has a plan for once and a grappling arrow. Of course, he's just about to take the shot into a convenient crack of rock, when a hand collars him and abruptly stops his descent.

Clint's first thought is ow.

His second is oh cool now I don't have to waste an arrow.

The third thought takes a few seconds to formulate, what with the somewhat painful way he landed on his shoulder, and the way his hearing aids are ringing in the explosion. Damn, Tony had said he'd fixed them not to do that anymore. But anyway, Clint's third reaction of who the fuck has a hand made of metal is a bit late and rather anticlimactic.

The first thing he says to the man with the dark greasy hair and dirty face is not any of these thoughts, or even something more reasonable. It's instead classic Clint Barton style:

"You need a haircut dude. Like I mean nice save and all, but you need a haircut, real assassins maintain their luscious locks."

The man stares. If a metal arm could glint threateningly, then this one does.

"Also thanks, I'm glad I didn't have to waste an arrow and get probably a bigger bruise from colliding with the mountain-cliff thing. Would've been a total let down."

The man stares some more.

"Oh!" Clint remembers. "You aren't HYDRA right, because that would suck and I'd have to try to take you down but you'd probably crush my skull with that metal hand thing you've got going, and then boom, no more sassy awesome archer."

"You are taking down HYDRA?" The man says, after Clint has almost convinced himself that he's hallucinating the strange guy with the metal arm.

Clint rolls his eyes.

"Dude I am not just taking down HYDRA, I'm fucking exploding them." 

Finally, the metal-armed man smiles. It's small and jaded, an expression Clint finds vaguely reminiscent of Natasha when she has to do particularly dirty work. 

"Good." Comes the fierce murmur.

Clint shrugs mentally. Ah well, people these days.

"You like exploding HYDRA too?"

"I am more for ripping them apart with my bare hands." 

Clint grins.

"Violent, I like it."

They sit in silence for a few moments, and if Clint was a cooler assassin he'd make an awesome exit. As it is, he stretches and groans, making a show of offering guy a hand (ha, a hand). Of course, Mr. Dark and Greasy just stands on his own, revealing some seriously heavy duty body armor.

"Well, if you wanna blow some HYDRA bitches up you can stick around with me. I've got a list I'm working my way down, and two people make bigger explosions than one."

The man looks surprised by the offer, like he desperately wants to accept and yet wants with almost the same desperation to run. Clint doesn't ask because he has his fair share of demons, and he can't judge someone who's trying to piece their life back together.

"Maybe some other time." Is all he gets in response, before the metal-arm dude is disappearing, like some ninja shit. Despite himself Clint is impressed. 

He watches the flaming building above him for a little while before leaving to hop the plane to his next location.

 

It's only two bases later when he runs into the man again. This time, robot dude is surrounded by HYDRA operatives, hands on his head and face down turned.

Clint can't say he's attached to the guy or anything, but it's not like he particularly wants brains splattered all over him. Also, the other guy did do him a solid that time and Clint isn't someone who likes debts. 

He fires three arrows in the space of ten seconds and tosses a gun to a surprised Mr. Dark and Greasy, and wow has he even changed clothes since the last time Clint ran into him? That had to have been at least two weeks ago? Maybe?

Clint considers his awful sense of time as he drops another HYDRA operative, jabbing an arrow into a shoulder and another into a throat. He hears gunfire and takes comfort in the fact that obviously metal armed guy is taking care of his group of goons.

Finally, there's silence. Clint starts gathering his arrows, checking which are salvageable, before stopping in front of mystery man. He's met with a wary look, so Clint just rolls his eyes. 

"Honestly, I just saved your ass, it's not like I'm going to stab you now." The other guy just blinks, and doesn't lose the suspicious look. Clint sighs. "I was paying you back, from that time you saved me from like a hundred foot drop? Ring any bells? I guess you just run around catching guys falling from the skies. Must get you laid a lot."

That gets a reaction, thank god. The man snorts.

"Not so much." 

Clint slaps him on the shoulder and ignores mystery guy's flinch.

"I feel that man, you'd think the dudes and ladies would appreciate a good knight in shining armor but no luck." Clint smirks. "Or should I say, no fuck?"

That gets him a full laugh, and Clint's feeling pretty good about his people skills.

"Oh by the way, have you taken care of the rest of the goons already or are bad guys going to be popping out at any minute?" Clint asks.

The man shakes his head slightly. "No. I cleared the compound." 

Clint claps his hands. "Okay sweet, you wanna blow this joint? Literally and figuratively?"

Mr. Incommunicado dips his head and even offers a slight smile.

They watch the frankly spectacular explosion from a good distance away and then Clint turns to mystery man.

"I've got some beer back at my safe house if you wanna stick around." He says, casual as he can make it.

The truth is, well, Clint is fucking lonely alright? When SHIELD was still around he had friends, contacts, people who he'd share a beer with over after action reports. Before New York, there was Strike Team Delta, he and Natasha burning the world down together while Phil watched their back and occasionally threw gasoline on the fire. They were his team, his family, and now Phil is dead (except then not, but he is busy and far away enough that Clint never sees his own husband) and Natasha destroyed SHIELD and is trampling around the world looking for a man no one believed existed and has been dead for seventy years. 

So yeah, Clint is lonely, and maybe that's why he asks a strange man he's met twice to come back to his place and get drunk. 

Surprisingly, he gets a yes.

Later that night, Clint drinks a six pack with mystery man who he's now been told is called James. It's nice, in the way that drinking with a total stranger can be, and it's devolved into a competition about the best sniper shots they've made over the years. Clint is pretty sure he's won, because even James conceded that a shot made dropping from a plane through two windows to hit a man squarely in the eye _with an arrow_ was impressive.

"So," Clint hiccups, "You wanna come with? When I hit the next base?"

James looks like he's considering, like he might agree, and Clint could cheer because it'd be nice for someone to have his back for a change.

"Alright." 

Clint bites back a fist pump because James really is jumpy and his reflexes are damn good. Tomorrow, they start out for the next HYDRA base. 

 

That's how the next six months go, James and Clint blowing through his list of targets and generally just making a nuisance of themselves. Clint never actually gets James' last name, but that's okay, because he does get a frankly ridiculous number of war stories. 

He knows that James has someone in his past that he's too scared to face now that he's become a killer, and that HYDRA fucked him up pretty bad in general. James knows that Clint got turned and killed a lot of innocent people, including his husband temporarily. Basically they get really drunk and talk about how much they hate themselves and then kill HYDRA to make up for it. Probably not really healthy, but fuck it.

They've just about run their full lap around Europe, when they find Nat, Steve, and Sam again. 

It's like this: Clint goes flying out of a window, glass spraying in every direction, and skids about twenty feet across the pavement. 

"Fucking fuck!" He shouts. The very nice leg who stopped his slide kicks him onto his back and he stares up at Natasha. Clint blinks once, twice. "Hi, Nat?"

The left half of the building behind them collapses.

Steve walks around Nat, quite frankly looking like shit with the dark shadows under his eyes thing he's got going on (and how the fuck do super soldiers even get sleep deprived anyway), and pulls Clint to his feet.

"Hawkeye. Status?"

He shrugs. "Pretty good, we're just about done here and then we'll clean up our mess, promise."

Natasha raises an eyebrow. "We?"

He's about to reply, rub it in her face that hey look, he can make friends too, when he hears James' voice from inside the collapsing building.

"Barton! Christ, pal, stop lazying around and help me finish these assholes up, yeah?"

"I'm coming, you impatient android!" Clint calls back. The swearing he gets is satisfying in a weird kind of way.

It also turned out, the longer he hung around with James, the more the other man gained a personality and Brooklyn accent. Clint was looking forward to introducing him to Steve. It would be cool to see the differences in the lingo between the 1940's and whenever the fuck James was born.

"I'll be right back." He tells Nat and Steve, a little too distracted to really acknowledge the shell-shocked look on Steve's face and Nat's steadily climbing eyebrow.

He climbs back into the now burning building and shoots the guy James is struggling with in the eye. James scoffs at him as he turns and shoves a knife in between some goon's ribcage. "'Bout damn time."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah." Clint flips him off, knocking another arrow. "Let's just finish this up, I got someone I want you to meet."

"The only thing I'm meetin' after this is a bottle of whiskey."

It really does only take a few minutes before they're strolling out of the building and exploding it behind them. Clint thinks it'll make a pretty awesome entrance, he's gotta say.

"James, I want you to meet my best friend Nat. That's Steve and Sam behind her." He waves a hand in their direction, but turns when he realizes that James has gone sniper-still. He looks like he's seen a ghost.

When he glances at the other three all he gets is Nat and Sam staring at him with wide eyes, and Steve gaping at James, looking pale and hopeful all at once.

What the fuck is going on here?

"Bucky?" 

Oh. Oh _shit_. That's what the fuck is going on here.

Suddenly a lot more makes sense.

Steve is stumbling forward, and James- Bucky, Jesus _Christ_ \- is stumbling forward to catch him. Sam and Natasha go for their weapons but Clint just watches, stunned as Captain America sticks his tongue down the throat of the Winter Soldier. 

Well, the reason why James didn't give him shit for liking girls and guys is a hell of a lot clearer.

Natasha has come to around to him now and she socks him in the arm hard enough that he feels it in his toes.

"Ow! What was that for?"

"I told you," she says through clenched teeth, "to keep an eye out for the Winter Soldier."

"How was I supposed to know he was the Winter Soldier? You didn't really describe him that well, and besides you said his name was Bucky!"

"Clint," Natasha says patiently, in that tone that means run for the hills and never come back, "His name is James Buchanan Barnes. _Bucky Barnes_. And exactly how many HYDRA assassins running around with metal arms did you think there _were_?"

Put like that, Clint feels like a bit of an idiot. Captain America and the Winter Soldier are still making out in the background, though it's dissolved into what looks more like a teary hug with half-hearted kissing. 

God _dammit_. He should've just gone back to New York and taken care of his apartment building. No one is ever going to let him live this down.


End file.
